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SAGE Publishing Statement on Plan S

February 13, 2019

We understand the signatories of Plan S are frustrated by the pace of transition to open access (OA), but we believe that the hybrid option is a crucial element in the transformation, as long as it is underpinned by meaningful local and global offsetting polices and liberal Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) archiving policies. While we do not view hybrid OA as an end in itself, we believe it has an important role to play in the transformation of less well-funded disciplines.

Over the last decade, SAGE has supported the growth of OA publishing, we have been an active in the community being one of only two publishers to engage in the EC-funded Study of Open Access Publishing in 2007, were a founding board member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008, and launched SAGE Open, the first broad-spectrum OA journal in the social and behavioural sciences in 2010. SAGE has always positioned itself to provide OA solutions to the market as and when our various stakeholders require them - editors, authors, societies, library customers and funders.

Indeed, as a response to a growing demand, we have created high-quality Gold OA publishing outlets (we publish nearly 200 today) and provided instruments to deliver OA in our subscription journals today, through zero embargo archiving, and tomorrow, through meaningful transition mechanisms.

We are not disputing the core principle of Plan S, that in the long term hybrid should not be compliant, but we would encourage the signatories to facilitate a long transition period, as long as a meaningful and transparent transition plan is in place.

Committed to supporting and championing the vital work of the social sciences, SAGE has also signed onto a letter from humanities and social science (HSS) publishers submitted to the open consultation of cOAlition S, which addresses questions specific to how these changes impact HSS disciplines. Read it here: An HSS Perspective on Plan S.